Many industries have a need for marking items. Such marking may include coding for inventory control, labeling, instructions and/or identification. Floral industries have the same need to mark potted and cut plants and flowers. Floral industries have a further need to include various greetings when delivering plants and flowers for special occasions. The floral industry currently utilizes standard marking practices on the containers or pots such as direct inking or adhesive labels. Plant inserts are also often provided for pricing, inventory control, growing directions. With respect to floral arrangements, usually a small card is included when the arrangement is delivered attached to a plastic holder inserted into the vase or container. The card usually includes a greeting, such as "Happy Birthday."
Cigars are also often given as greetings and for congratulations, birth announcements and the like. Cigars used for this purpose typically have a special greeting printed on the band or on a plastic/paper wrapper with the cigar inside.
Some industries, albeit not the floral industry, have begun using laser energy to mark items. Such methods are provided by: Ravellat (U.S. Pat. No. 5,021,631), Piliero (U.S. Pat. No. 5,120,928), Ito et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,198,843), and Drouillard et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,660,747). While these devices use laser energy to mark items, they typically are used to mark nonsensitive nonliving items with simple bar codes or alphanumeric characters. The items marked are not flexible or delicate, and, therefore, concerns in being able to adequately mark products in the floral industry using a laser are not addressed by such patents. Similarly, such patents do not address the concerns for marking leaf wrapped products such as cigars, including its cylindrical form factor.
There remains a need for a method to mark/cut thin, flexible and delicate materials without destroying the item itself.